Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/488

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TAYLOR


■i:V2


TAYLOR


the old school, vory .stiulious, endowed with a most remarkable menioiy, occu- pied the highest positions in the gift of Ins profession and had the respect and friendship of all. Ills record in obstetrics is somewhat unique in that he attended more confinements than any practitioner in Cincinnati. He originated a special method of restoring an inverted uterus to its original position (known as Tate's method) and cured the longest standing case of inverted uterus on record.

Tate introduced the following resolu- tion in the Cincinnati Academy of Medi- cine which passed it, and then went to Columbus and presented it before the state legislature and secured its adoption. All money received from the sale of tickets to medical students w'itnessing operations and attending lectures in the amphitheater of the Cincinnati Hospital shall go to the establishment and main- tenance of a medical library and museum. In this W'ay Dr. Tate became the founder of the Cincinnati Hospital Library. He married Margaret Kincaid Chenoweth in 1853 and had nine children, John Cheno- weth, Abbie Humphreys, Lizzie Polk, William Ross, George North, Thomas Orkney, Magnus Alfred, Frank McCor- mack, Ralph Booth Tate. Two, Magnus and Ralph, selected medicine as a pro- fession.

John Humphreys Tate died of cerebral hemorrhage when seventy-six years old, on February 7, 1892, at Cincinnati, Ohio.

A. G. D.

Taylor, Charles Fayette (1827-1899)-.

Charles Fayette Taylor, orthopedic surgeon, and inventor, was born and brought up on a farm in Williston, Ver- mont, April 25, 1827. His grandfather, John Taylor of Williston, was a great- grandson of the Rev. Edward Taylor (1642-1727) of Westfield, Massachusetts, who came to this country from England in 1669.

After taking his M. D. at the Univer- sity of Vermont in 1856, he went to London and studied therapeutic exer- cises under M. Roth, a pupil of Ling.


On reliuning he .settled in New York City and introduced the so-called " Swed- ish movements" into this country. His book on the "Theory and Practice of the .Movement Cure" (Lindsay and Blakis- ton) was published in 1861. His experi- ence with therapeutic exercises soon directed his attention to the neglected state of sufferers from chronic joint and spinal troubles and other deformities, and he .studied with enthusiasm the problem of improving their treatment, l)eing a pioneer in the apphcation of local rest and protection by proper splinting, and in the abundant use of fresh air. To these ends he devised a series of corrective and protective appliances, many of which are still standard. In this work he made use of everything which seemed of service, adding whatever of value his own original mind could suggest regardless of tradition.

He also devised a system of exercising machines for the W'cak and paralytic, many of which were worked by power like the Zander apparatus. He proved his mastery in three fields, therapeutic exercises, mechanical orthopedics, and a common sense psychotherapy, some- W'hat on the lines now practised by Dubois of Bern, and which enabled him to effect many striking cures in bedridden neurasthenics and others.

In 1866 Dr. Taylor called the attention of Howard Potter, Theodore Roosevelt, James Brow^n, John L. Aspinwall, and others to the need of a place where crippled and deformed poor might receive treatment. Becoming interested, these friends with Dr. Taylor, founded the New York Orthopedic Dispensary, afterwards the New York Orthopedic Dispensary and Hospital, which Dr. Taylor served for eight years as surgeon- in-chief.

Dr. Taylor's originaUty, thoroughness, self reliance and enthusiastic devotion to the welfare of his patients won the con- fidence of the profession and gave him a remarkably successful practice, until his health began to fail in 1882. After extensive travels in foreign coun-